What's Your Point? Overtime | Sept 6, 2026

Welcome to what's your point overtime where we continue our discussion of state, national, local, and global issues in a more freewheeling fashion. You know we got a pretty good viewership Chris Chertico. I know. Okay. I hosted it straight up. Hey Paul, what do we leave on the table today that we because I know you know a big old brain of yours we left something on the table today that we didn't talk about or needs further discussion. Well there's a couple things going on so locally I think one of the things that's happening is school started and when school starts you have kids going back you have administrators who had anticipated X number of kids now seeing the actual numbers that are showing up and there's a lot of conversation happening right now in the Houston area about you know enrollment numbers what's happening as a result of the education freedom accounts and all of those conversations are going hand in hand with this big question around well what does the future hold right so my youngest is freshman or sophomore at Texas A&M and he's an engineering student and it's one of the things that he and I talked about last time he visited which was dad I don't know what you know my future holds right and if you scale that back down all the way through kindergarten and you start asking you know the question around what does it mean to be college career ready what does it mean to be ready to go into college without having to take any remedial courses and incur debt without benefit these are all the questions that superintendents teachers principals are asking and parents unfortunately a lot of times don't even have the language to ask the right questions they just trust and hope that the systems that they put their kids into are doing the right thing and and I feel all of that weight when I'm working with people that I work with in my current role and and I think that's one of the things that everyone kind of just feels and it's part of the mood you know the vibes if you will that are happening and I think that's why we're in this area you can't control a lot you are seeing people rebel against elements of that like data centers and flock cameras and what-have-you average daily attendance it's how we fund it's a key part of the formula if average daily attendance comes in lower than was budgeted for what kind of problems is that create it's about 50 to 75 dollars a day per kid for every absence that occurs depending on the the school and and what people fail to understand Texas is one of I think 13 states that fund school districts this way what happens is a school administrator has to you know air conditioned that seat pay for the teacher who's teaching that empty seat all those costs are locked the variable income is the thing that causes problems and so there's the enrollment piece that's one the ADA is another attendance hasn't rebounded from COVID I think we're still on as a general rule about four percentage point lower than we used to be before COVID hit and all of those factors kind of just you know pile up and you know when I talked to superintendents one of the things they're seeing right now is where the kids were missing school you know when they in getting started now they're coming up to grade six and seven grade six and seven took hits this year the curriculum piles up at grade six and seven and the test starts hitting in a much more difficult way than it was tested through grade five and so in some of our districts seventh grade especially math test which is one of the hardest tests for our kids to take the scores just fell off the table and when people are wondering why that happened they forget or not we don't forget on our side but people generally like what happened there what happened there was what that kid should have learned in terms of ratios proportionality how to add and subtract division all of those things that got missed along the way add up and all of a sudden they land there in grade seven and so again if we're looking at the median kid in Texas the median kid in Houston those are the questions that we should be asking ourselves as a community are we preparing those kids for a future that we don't have any idea around and the answer is we don't know if you listen to Bill King we've got fewer kids with more options now they can either stay at home they can go to a parochial school and get a stipend or they can go to their their neighborhood public school or charge or charter school bill what do you foresee oh yeah I think public public education I think is gonna be in a long-term decline first of all they've lost the confidence of the general public and a parent generally speaking and I think that there are going to be increasing alternatives I don't know exactly what the effective AI is gonna be but it's gonna be dramatic I mean really dramatic I'm just sort of blown away just working my own grandkids and stuff the things you can do with that to have it you know have the AI show them how to do problems and that sort of thing I think that you know it's people today talk about uncertainty like things used to be certain you know I think I changed my major three or four times while I was in college you know and then even if I got out I still changed a couple times after that I mean we live in uncertain world that's just the nature of our species history going all the way back they are changing very fast right now and I can understand that but I just I don't know I've sometimes feel like we're we think that you know there's a soul I think it was not sure who said it said that if you want to make God laugh make a plan you know I think we need to we need to build into our children some resilience and explain that you know it's not all planned out you're gonna make changes all through your life I think about my own career the changes I made during after I got out of school and after I got out of law school you know it's just it's you know unbelievable how many different changes there were along the way so I just think you've got to be prepared to be more flexible probably today than ever but it's always been like that to some degree yeah one of my favorite lines is hope is not a strategy you know and just hoping that public schools will get better with diminishing funding doesn't seem like a good tactic or a good strategy lockdowns really really go ahead tomorrow so what I was gonna say when you talk about the sixth and seventh graders those are the kindergarteners and first graders that Cove it happened so they didn't have school they had a mother who had three kids maybe on the seven she couldn't teach those kids how to learn you learn how to learn in kindergarten in first grade to lose critical years like that there's been nothing done on a wide scale to try to put those kids back on track so as Paul said when they get in a six or seven that's when it shows up and I don't see them doing anything even now they could still they I think I feel they should have forced summer school on all kids when school got back in just to see where are they instead of what they're doing but it brings me to the point of what I was saying last week I am having thank God for Houston City College I am having an event on September the 17th at 6 30 p.m. a good hope Baptist Church where they are going to come and they're going to talk about the certificates that you can get to get a job right now plumbing assistant electrical assistant HVAC computers cosmetology CNAs AI training computer science training because every child is not college bound and they have no certainty and they have no direction this way find out what you like and you can get a certificate and Bill said I went on a chemical engineering scholarship if you ask me one day I think about it right now I couldn't tell you nothing at all I changed careers multiple times but if we don't do something to give these children something to hold on because that's what they need stability I mean they're gonna just be floundering you you see the crime and it's younger and younger and younger and younger but you've got to do something to get them back on track because the public school system that we all hit it does not exist in so if we had a flock camera in April at Gary's house during during COVID I guarantee you there was you'd see her with a chancla going to school is putting them and getting them out of their comfort zone and put them in a place where they can actually learn I can tell you right now my children didn't learn squat during COVID all right I am the worst teacher and that's why I respect teachers so very much because but I don't know how the people that do homeschooling do it because my kids are just the house they're just vibing they're living they're having a great time but at school they know they have to buckle down their cell phones are not there their little iPads are not there the dogs not over there licking them you know and I just feel that our society today I when I graduated was in 2007 and I feel like I wasn't prepared for the world I wasn't and that was way back then and my children now I'm starting to wonder is the school system that they're in right now preparing them for the world they're trying to you know they found the cell phones they're trying to spend less time on computers in the school I don't know if I agree with that because now our phones are in our computers are a part of everyday life we have to learn how to navigate and integrate with AI and figure out how we can use this for our benefit and not allow it to harm our future generations but we can't get away from it now it's here to stay. There is no more ferocious advocate supporter of public education than Chris Tritico and I kind of saved you for last because you can hear what are your four good friends here had to say. Way back in 2007. Hey I was the last graduating class without a cell phone. I graduated before computers had been invented so I was really good at algebra until they added the Y and it got tough. You know I was gonna be a lawyer. You know the the it's interesting to hear you know I'm glad you're doing that event because in the course of my career in representing teachers when I first started in in in my career when I first started representing teachers which was 30 days after I got my law license and it's been close to 40 years now CE courses were a big part of every school district and shortly after I started we started moving away from that and we started canceling CE courses and it was such a huge mistake yeah I've been railing against that for years and we're now starting to move sort of back into that just a little bit but we're not doing it the way we did when I first started 40 years ago where we had just course after course after course and getting kids who didn't want to go to college or couldn't go to college into areas were like HVAC or things like that. Automechanics. Automechanics is hard now because it's all computing but but those areas we should be moving kids that don't want to go to college or aren't going to go to college into those areas and in high school is a place to do it but we don't. One more thing I've been working all summer started about six eight months ago on it on a documentary that's coming out towards the end of this month or maybe early next month called The Long Game and it's about the state of public education that that I believe in the documentary will show that our our state government is is in the in the business of killing public education in Texas. Absolutely. And it's my belief that the governor and he has said it that the governor is trying to sell off our public schools to billionaires so that they can profit make profit off of our off the backs of our children and the documentary will be out shortly and we'll show that. I'm sorry one quick thing what Paul said about attendance none of us said why a lot of kids are not going to school they're scared of ice. Absolutely I have multiple guy kids who teach and they're like they're not coming and if one isn't coming the sibling not coming I know because it's not just one kid usually it's three they're not coming because they're so afraid their mom's gonna get picked up or the dad whoever dropping them off gonna get picked up or that they might get picked up. That is critically happening right now after the Salgado case they're terrified. Paul are you getting that kind of intel anecdotally? Yeah so you know I made a commitment that I wouldn't forget Lorenzo Salgado Ralpho's name and the reason for that is we forget it's easy to forget we get distracted we have a lot of other things that show up in our lives and at the same time this was a man who raised you know who moved here when he was 17 he raised his children here as American citizens and they have gone on to become productive people in our community and there are people who are trolling them calling you know calling them wetbacks saying that they need to go back and all these terrible things so our community has been rocked before and has been resilient I think it's important for us to remember that and the reality is there are families and this is happening right now ICE is going to bus stops to pick up people and when I heard that I thought it's impossible that that's not possible and of course it's possible of course that's happening and when you have families who have to choose between you know getting possibly arrested or having their children educated that's a real problem and again there are a lot of people who think well that's what they deserve they broke the law you know all these things like okay well and you know I don't know how those same people you know put on a tie go to church this morning and when when you know if you read the red words in the Bible it's whatever you do to the least of my people right and if you don't look at the Hispanics who you know clean our houses cook our food you know build our roads as the least of our people then you're not paying attention all right first of all pitch the work of my colleague Karis who spoke to Rinaldo this week we have Salgado family interview on Fox 26 you can find it there Paul is there alternative way of funding schools that is not so dependent on average daily attendance what's the alternative I mean honestly one of the things that you could look at is there's a model that's currently being built it's Tifa it's the Educational Freedom Act so those dollars are set they're paid at a quarterly rate and they've established a ten thousand five hundred dollar amount and that is based in part upon the amount of money that's being spent in the public system and I think there is a model there that could be sought after and again most districts do look at enrollment there's a lot of things that Texas actually does well when it comes to public education one of them is it's done a better job of getting really clear about what the goal is the goal is now going to be shifting to what happens to a child after they graduate five years after graduation is one of the things that the state is shifting towards which is aligned with what organizations like the Greater Houston Partnership has been concerned about and some other organizations which is our kids prepared enough through k-12 to go out into the workforce and to be making a livable wage and I think that amount is now set at $45,000 per person $60,000 per family but is that the amount of money and if you can't do that right now we're sitting I think at 20% of kids who five years after graduation are hitting that dollar amount you know that's a problem and so those are the kinds of questions and this is where you know I'm a proud independent because as what Democrats that I you know I like and I agree with they're the ones who are really pushing our educational system to make sure that we're holding our schools and our and our districts accountable for getting kids where they need to be there are a lot of superintendents right now who despite budget cuts are putting together these really good career and technology programs they've gone to their communities and they've asked for bonds to build career technology vocational ed centers to prepare that workforce that is not college-bound but is is very much aligned with hey we're gonna go out and make you know do right for our families and come in our community that's awesome and those are the types of celebrations that we should be having and and what that has to be that has to be a partnership where community leaders get behind school boards when the school board say hey we're gonna go and ask for a bond to do this specific work to create the community that we want for our future but but that's that all needs to happen together and it's hard yeah you know no one ever accuses me of being the sharpest knife in the drawer but we've been talking about this for a long time you know why does it make sense for a kid to go work on the yard crew with his dad when the path for upward mobility is to stay in school and learn how to get a job like HVAC like welding like auto repair like a whole range of things that that takes a $35,000 a year income to 90 to 100 it's the path to to economic mobility and it's available to particularly these families who have a tradition of working hard for so long the public school system you know eschewed that and said everybody needed to go to yeah yeah you know and so look if you're you know a young Hispanic man and you're going to school and they're so we're gonna prepare you to college and you know there's no way you're ever gonna go and your dad needs you to go help lay brick and you can make you know a few hundred dollars a week doing that then it's a rational decision to make for them I want to add something Chris said here which is even if you are college-bound there are some practical things you need to know in life and we had shop when I was in high school I took that but more importantly than that in the summers I work for the pipe fitters or I work for the carpenters my dad and so there's actually a bunch of stuff I know how to do now around the house which makes my wife very happy and it's just there but but things like even like on financial being able to balance your check yes we understand we know buying health insurance or buying car insurance and I don't understand why the public school system is sort of turned up their nose to all that like well that's you know we're getting people ready to go to you know MIT or whatever well most your kids are not going to go to MIT you know yeah yeah you want to see Bill King tickled I went up to his attic he completely rebuilt it and did it all the work himself Wow pretty pretty solid scale gas scales you know another thing is that the other issue is that a lot of people that live within poverty lines and are low income also do not qualify to apply their federal grants towards these types of programs and guess what you have to pay for the program completely up front versus if you want to take the traditional four-year path now that has changed recently in the last couple of years they've added more tech programs that you can do but back then that was not available you have to pay out of pocket well at the event that I'm hosting on September the 17th at 630 p.m. at Good Hope Baptist Church at 3015 North McGregor they are bringing the financial aid because they have many they have government non-government scholarships available to help you through this program that's good and you get a certificate they have companies waiting to hire you because let me be clear now you can say what you want to say about who didn't laugh who not here anymore as our host said Greg he noticed the difference when he went to the grocery store immediately when they first started I started threatening people a lot of construction companies are hurting yes because they do not have the workers and so they have companies ready to hire you I'm telling you big ma me ma get your get your kids over here so they will not be sitting there on that damn game on that phone on that computer but out here making money where they can absolutely learn how to build a computer or work on a computer I got them come I gotta ask these two because they are two of the most ferocious and well-known victim and public safety advocates in our city and one of the new components in this budget bill and you correct me if I'm wrong is a brand new Department of Public Safety what it what can y'all tell us about it bill you want to start it's not in the budget it's something that Rodney has proposed over and above additional five million dollars what are they gonna do they basically have three programs down there that are supposed to try to help people in crisis sort of intervention type programs they have three different ones there's very little date on how effective these things don't we already have a program we have three of them in Harris County and so this would set up a department to oversee those three those three existing programs so look I'm gonna pull those three in and add some administrators over on top of it we need more those we really don't have very good data about whether they're effective or not the city of Houston has a very similar program but it's it's it's in the police department as part of their you know overall so like this is just another Empire sort of building thing but I'm gonna go back for a second to the education stuff because there's a couple of things the role that the community colleges are playing today is more important than it's ever been yes I mean they are really the ones out there on the cutting edge of this they're doing a lot of joint programs with high school so you get college credits mm-hmm it's still too damn expensive though I'm helping a couple of young people one get a nursing and one get a forensics science degree and I mean it's gonna cost you know $5,000 a year so it's still too much money and we've got to figure out how do we get these kids in education without them having to go in debt to get back it up dr. Margaret Ford Fisher who is the chairman of Houston City College who is the creator of online courses who understood a long time ago that college is expensive they don't have time to come in let's make it so they can do this at home mm-hmm they are bringing in corporations that who are looking to get more computer intelligent educated rather people and they are given scholarships because yes college is high but a community college is a hell of a lot cheaper than a four year college way cheaper way way cheaper I mean no comparison look I in my 26 years here did some reporting over it in particular San Jacinto College they had a they have auto mechanic training program where all of the manufacturers come in and have a presence there right they have commercial truck driving training there they have an applied an applied associate degree crafted by the petrochemical plants that after two years those guys graduate immediately make 75 or 80 with all of the all of the overtime they can handle to where they're 23 years old making six figures buying homes paying cash for trucks I mean you know it's out there they got the biggest nursing school today and as the former assistant to the Dean of Prairie View College of Nursing I would tell many students because Prairie View College of Nursing is very small they would be so devastated that they didn't get in I would send them straight to San Jack and send them straight to HCC because there's only one nursing board tax exam in the state of Texas everybody take it you just taking it with an associate and she's taking it with a bachelor's but baby once you are in there's not a hospital on the planet that won't pay for you to become it get your bachelor's degree nursing nursing has changed in hospitals will not hire a nurse with an associate's degree anymore you have to have a bachelor's degree to work at a hospital and so everyone has quit quit offering an associate's degree for nursing and they all only offer bachelor's degrees because no hospital will hire you with associates anymore so it's been about so so one of the this is a great conversation by the way what gets measured gets done right and one of the things that I know the state is moving towards is having a way to line up the incentives that it measures schools by with what we're having the conversation about here which is is Johnny is Susie are they prepared for what's gonna the world that they're gonna face and right now there's so much information out there that it's hard to discern and figure out what to do to advise a kid because you know and Bill brought something up and I think it's interesting because I think what Bill brought up a minute ago was it was true maybe five years ago but right now when you talk to school administrators and school leadership and boards there is this strong shift moving towards vocational ed and career technology in large part because they they they know that like they haven't been doing right by a lot of their kids right because especially when you look at we talked to school district sometimes and the reality is schools getting harder and harder for kids and they're not prepared and when they're not prepared they're having to take these remedial courses the remedial courses add make them add debt and then they drop out because they feel like failures now they're dropping out with college debt and that makes you know school boards feel miserable and everyone feels bad and and at the end of day the kid has has debt on their hands so thankfully we are moving in that direction but it's slow and the kind of conversation that's happening here needs to be happening in schools with kids now I do want to talk about that that those programs I've had so many you know politicians state and local who reach out and they all listen and they're so good at listening and then they bring out their their legal pads and they write things down and I say things like hey do you have programs that in any way match the amount of money you spend on people who are released from prison who go back into the world and they said we're working on that and so David was killed five years ago and the working on that seems to be taking a lot longer than I would have thought nobody and nowhere in the budget is there anything for victims you know and I'm thinking about a specific friend whose whose husband lost his job after her after their son was killed and so I think there were five different shooters who were involved she had to go and you know mom had to go to these different places and track down all the different trials and it was just a fiasco and all of that happened and dad couldn't take it and had to quit his job right before he was retirement eligible right mom got let go because she was having to go all these trials and she was employed by a very well-known organization here in Houston and lost her job right and so each of these people lost their jobs and no one reintegrated them back into the community when they lost a child there are no services for victims and no matter who I talk to about this everyone's like oh that's really sucks nobody wants to imagine what it's like to be a victim you can imagine what it's like to be arrested wrongly or whatever and so we have this big interest or people and I understand this I have no problem with the funding going there I do think it should be a match of some sort I'm advocating for a dollar for dollar match how about a nickel for a dollar how about for every dollar you spend on criminals reintegrating back into the community you spend a nickel getting victims the help that they need and not the BS victims services thing that we get I still get this and I got this this week I got a text from the Texas Vine Network Gerald Wayne Williams you know is up for something and it literally said unknown and the unknown thing is happening this week if you have any questions call this number so I call the number Harris County clerk it goes to voicemail and then it hangs up so I use thankfully I have phone numbers for people and so I texted somebody in the DA's office and the DA's office said oh well it's a pro se case he's brought himself up he's saying that he didn't have DNA evidence used and he is asking for a time in court well I happen to know how to use the system and I happen to get people who call me back but if I was just a regular person trying to work the system I get this horrifying email on this horrifying text message in the middle of the day and nowhere to go there's nobody and go look at the Harris County Court websites there are links for every type of person who has any interaction whatsoever with the court except for victims yeah see that seems now I applaud you that I mean Paul because my mama had a heart attack within two months after my brother was killed right my daddy had a stroke six weeks later right never recovered no and I never even thought about that until you brought until you brought up there was nobody to help them nobody my mother could only stay at her job because she had been there so long but they would only let her come back part-time right we all had to send money so she could pay the house note mm-hmm but it was nobody there to help her nobody nobody broken hearts are real man we can open hearts bill uncovered something that is deep dive deep dive in the into this spending plan that's proposed and I asked him why does the Department of Equity need a 70% increase and Bill said they're funding a lot of that money is going for apprentice programs right now is that really their role and maybe the money should be going to to crime victims you know we've got different entities that can provide these apprenticeship and training why are we doing it or is it just a payout to the unions because the unions they're funding the union programs that are providing the apprenticeships there's about four million dollars it was came through ARPA money and and and there was just a pass-through and it went to the unions to run apprentice and there was also some kind of computer training you know vocational computer training when ARPA money cut off the county decided they were going to start having the taxpayers pay for that which I don't agree that's the county's role you know and this is the problem I have the county government will not stay in its lane its job is not you know job training leave that that community colleges leave that to people that actually know what the hell they're doing because when you go start looking into this there's also there's always a political connection you know well why would the Democrats being funding unions to run apprentice but I wonder why you know I promise you if we go start looking into this company that's got this you know computer training program we're gonna find you know a campaign donor or somebody's brother-in-law or somebody connected to that and this is one of the problems here is county county government is not municipal government it's not the state government it was organized by the state to do very specific things and the problem you've particular case who want to expand that role into something it's not and by the way I think you're gonna start seeing lawsuits from the state about the spending on some of these programs because I don't think they're authorized by the state constitution for a county to do it it's like Lena trying to get into early childhood or trips to France let me talk about what you mentioned about the victim thing Texas could learn a lot from Florida when Maria died their victim services people called me and sent me a form to fill out and I called them back and I said I don't I don't need anything and they said we'll fill it out and send it in with your receipts from the funeral and whatever else you have I said I'm fine I'm not worried about it and in about three months later they called back we don't have your form I said I told you I don't need it and they would not leave me alone until I filled it out and they paid for her funeral and I finally I was fine I'll fill it out and they sent me a check for the funeral they would not stop until they sent me that money and it was very nice of them but what you're saying about Texas Florida was I mean they would not they it was harassing for them to give me the money I didn't want it so what they the way they treated it there and in the way they handled the court appearances for me is different not only different it's it's 180 degrees different and so Texas could do a lot in learning how Florida handles those things. Minneapolis too, my mom couldn't afford my brother was killed on his birthday in Minneapolis and Minneapolis flew us to Minneapolis put us up in a hotel make sure that the taxis was there on time to get us to Hennepin County Court and all of that and no charge. They didn't do that. They did they were like no we want you to come here we need y'all to be here you know to show that your brother you know was a human had a life and all this and and everything and you ain't getting nothing like that in Texas. You barely get a call. So here you know to walk through the nightmare the simplest thing would be to have a person sit down with you and say here's what's about to happen to you right right yeah yeah and so you're gonna get into a line with the whole bunch of people who have ankle monitors and included might be the person who did violence to your family and as simple fix is you're not gonna get in that line no if you here's like your special ticket and you show it here and somebody will gather up all of the people and we will take you through the tunnels and we will take you to the right courtroom because by the way this happened look across the hallway there's the SOB who killed my son he's literally five feet away from me right no police officer in the hallway and I like the only thing that prevented me from just like just going after him in the middle of the hallway was I don't want to mess up the trial that was it right because every other cell in my body was even if you go down go down swinging right but freaking try nobody tells you how long the system takes to operate right no and they're not responsive I would tell him so you go back to work right go back to work and you're trying to get your work done and then the freaking phone rings and who is it it's your victim's advocate hey how's it going how do you think it's going you know like that's the stupidest thing you could ask but no one trains them to not call in the middle of the day so finally I had to have a conversation with the woman and I said look I said the only people who are allowed to call me are my kids and my mom that's it everybody else texts and then calls because I need to get ready for a call I can't just like take it take a call in the middle of a workday to add and then if so I'd always ask I'm like do you have any updates for me oh no no has anyone from the DA's office no no one's reached out you're my victim's advocate don't you have any information oh I can't see what's in the system then why are you calling me are you calling just to say hi that's the stupidest thing ever nobody understands the nightmare of the process and because there's no one to turn to right there's no person to say hey by the way the person who's responsible for doing this really sucks because there's nobody responsible on the other end of the spectrum the person who killed him gets a very well-paid attorney who represents them okay the DA's office doesn't represent me it represents the state of Texas the people of the state of Texas and I would ask do I need to hire an attorney like what do I what am I supposed to do nobody had any advice and you never think about it none of you were thinking oh this could happen to me on July 4th 2021 I thought I was going to an Astros game on you know in two days and I had two days off and I was so excited about having some time off to spend with my kid I spent the morning of July 6 meeting with the college counselor and David to talk about University of Florida and how he's gonna get a full ride because oh by the way he's a national merit scholar right that was the day he was killed so you don't think about that worst day our system are all of you who listen to me and took notes and did nothing or on the hook for this because you haven't done anything okay all you've done is fake it and there has to be somebody I've not gone to the funding community I'm like something there's got to be something but at a minimum there should be a link on every district court website if you are a victim click here and there should be a human on the other end of that click who responds to you and there I'm proud of you because you did nothing the only reason I didn't go to jail when they came went back with the verdict was because my mother was pleading because when he laughed I leaped over the bench and tried to literally break his neck and they grabbed me I mean just threw me back down and the man was like look it's emotion you know the trial is over the judge was like you know you you got you gonna be this I say you saying all this to me but you didn't say ---- that it's just kill my little brother you didn't say nothing nothing to him and I don't know what happened but we got a call 30 days later he was dead yeah he didn't live 30 days you have four people on this panel that have lost loved ones at the hands of violence and crime and we have experienced a system that needs to be fixed it has a lot of cracks and many of us fell through those cracks I feel like we need to have more victims in a position within these places to train and help because unfortunately the people that are handling those things right now have not experienced what we've experienced show your budget and I'll tell you your values yeah I'm gonna volunteer all four of them you want to fix the system this season the four people to start with yeah to start with give them some money do it you know give them some free I will help you for free so no family will go through that because I almost lost my mama and my daddy at the mother brother died because it almost killed them yep and when you feel nobody cares that is the hardest thing because as Paul said people are afraid to even ask you how you doing because they know how you doing how do you think I'm doing so y'all got to do something because the criminals got a billion options free room and board three meals a day the victim's family don't get nothing what do they do you add to that that the vast majority of crimes never go so Bill was there a significant increase for the public defenders office in this in this proposed budget million seventeen million yeah in an office that has gotten repeated double-digit increases over in the previous years right I think nothing for victims I didn't say anything I just asked to level the playing field what criminals get crime victims should get to they get free parking they get babysitting they get clothes it's ridiculous and there needs to be a process in the Harris County system where we don't have to encounter the murderers that killed their loved ones there should be a system as there isn't you have to go through security you have to park your vehicle you have to go through the same entrances you have to go through everything the same way same elevator same everything there's a lot of strong emotions there was many times where we couldn't take our many family members into the court because we knew that we're gonna encounter them and there was no telling when it was going to happen it's really something this system is broken for families who are facing multiple court appearances and are trying to to hold down jobs does it become onerous for them absolutely so Wendy is a hairdresser she shut down her salon she never went back the last day she worked was a day before Arlene passed away she couldn't she couldn't keep up with the mental load she couldn't keep going and then still have to fight for justice and unfortunately months after Arlene was killed no charges because we had an inadequate activist prosecutor I told her a fourth grader could have done better than that you know I've I spent 40 years defending people accused of crime and the system you know we we say that we say that the longer it takes the better off it is for the defendant that's that's typically true that's generally true in after Maria's murder I began to rethink that that premise because I didn't know until it happened to me that what it did to you mm-hmm how it felt and so I still do my job every day and I still I still defend my clients the best of my ability but I now have in my in the back of my mind what am I doing to these people every time I reset my case every time I reset a trial I'm resetting a trial because I need to reset this trial I don't reset a trial for the sake of resetting a trial if I ask for continuance is because I have to I don't do it anymore because I'm just doing it and I have a reason and a justifiable reason for doing it it's changed the way I practice law because of what my experience it's I'm not I've still got my clients interest at heart because that's my job and the Constitution requires it but this has materially changed my practice well I mean as all of your friends and I bring you on to the show and as Paul once said you exhume your loved ones and refill the feelings and you do it for the public's good we're trying to make everyone understand because it could be your family next yeah or if it is happening to someone that you know you will have some insight of the barriers that they are dealing with if you have an opportunity to advocate for this mistreated group of people where no one is doing right by them crime victims so I salute you I honor you and because it is not easy all very close personal friends and I know how tortured a loss tortured you are by the loss of those you love and so thank you you know I there are people out there now saying thank you as well so you know Paul what would it look like at the county level should we have a standalone department do we is it is it a I mean do we you know what what what are what are some fundamental advances we need to make so channel 2 ran a story about this program that Commissioner Ellis is behind a million for just for this I think Greenspoint is the only community that it's it's working through and it's to help people turn their lives around or avoid crime or whatever again yay for that I'm not trying to take that money away what I'm saying is there's a whole bunch of those right and there's not one not one source of education of information for victims nothing and what should happen is there should be you know and I'm not sure whether it should be funded by the county maybe this is something we should turn to some philanthropic people to to come in and step in because at times you're gonna have to be poised against you know the government poised against the people who are supposed to be helping out just so you can know like what are your rights what are your rights as a victim what are what do you have so you know and again what I recommended way back long ago to the DA's office under a former district attorney was at a minimum you should have a timeline that is fairly accurate that tells you what's going to happen and like resets I didn't know what I did not know that like it was an automatic that the first time we were gonna show up to court it was gonna be reset I was ready for like I didn't know what to be ready for because nobody told me right nobody prepared me for what that was gonna look like having someone sit down with you know at a minimum you can have videos this is not very complicated it could be an easy lift but there needs to be a person right who's been trained in trauma-informed training and trauma-informed training goes like this hey when you talk to a person they're not to remember anything you have to say right so you're gonna have to write this down and you're not gonna write it down in legalese you're gonna write it down in plain English you're gonna have pictures you're gonna have videos you're gonna follow up with them and you're gonna call them and say hey don't forget tomorrow is your court case here's what you need to be ready for here's how you should dress here's where you're gonna show up I'm gonna be there when you walk through the doors and I'm gonna sit with you before we go across the hall to go to the murder case great but something that simple doesn't take a lot and I've already met with all the decision makers in this nobody's done anything and again like I when I got trained as a principal it was show me your budget and your master schedule and I'm going to tell you what your values are as a school and I'm telling you right now that's it for the jillions of dollars we're spending not a single dollar is going towards actual victim services and that that's a that's a fix that's possible but it would require listening to informed people who understand the inside of the system to figure out how to get around it but also you know like this doesn't have to wait again we don't have to wait longer this should be fixed me I'll make this commitment to you all four of you as long as this platform exists we will advocate for victims rights and we will demand that that public officials do the right thing by this on the unserved group of citizens the victims you know it is it is what we can do we can we can we can let our voice be heard hopefully somebody is listening all right you know incredible conversation absolutely and you know I I thank you Greg okay thanks for joining us for what your point overtime I hope you'll come back we'll be here have a good week